


The 2030 That Didn’t Happen

by OnBehalfOfTheBunnies



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 04:11:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12051051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnBehalfOfTheBunnies/pseuds/OnBehalfOfTheBunnies
Summary: Before the 2030 the Legends visited was erased from the timeline it was real.





	The 2030 That Didn’t Happen

**Author's Note:**

> So back when I saw Legends of Tomorrow 1x06 I wrote this up and never got around to editing it until now. The one line, “Felicity left after everything that happened.” wouldn't quit playing in my head, so this is just a brief exploration of what could have been.

The Uprising, as it is called online, because the local media was taken over in the first few hours, was chaos and destruction.

Mom was visiting, so we and the Diggles escorted them – our mixed handful of kids, my mom, the nanny, out of the city with enough cash for any situation that might come up, and direct them to the hidden cabin that will be a safe haven until we can get back to them. John Jr, a strong lanky teenager, has to be physically forced out by John and Oliver. Our goodbyes, short as they are, carry a gravity in the words just in case they are the last ones we get.

Any person in our slightly expanded team and families who aren’t fighting, or has a ‘free’ half hour, helps move as much of my equipment to the sub-levels of the bunker, and as many of my _special_ projects down to a warehouse, reinforced, and more importantly not associated with us in any way. It was about the safest place from looters that are going building by building.

While that is happening, Slade’s son…he takes my husband’s arm.

It doesn’t matter that we have a brilliant surgeon on our team who was right there with him, and part of the few who got him out of there, working to keep him alive, functional. That someone was there cauterizing to his directions so Oliver wouldn’t bleed out as they rushed him back. It doesn’t matter that our work with mechanics, robotics, prosthetics, neural netting is the definition of cutting edge. It doesn’t matter that the few of us can cobble together something useable in that one night by picking apart existing tech and inventing or building the rest on the way.

If I ever get a chance that _boy_ will be dead by my hand before he lays another finger on Oliver.

Oliver is still pale, recovering, the mesh is taking and the prosthetic appears to function nearly as flawlessly as his former arm, but still he pushes, doesn’t give himself a single day. He goes back to where Grant Wilson left the arm, a grotesque symbol of his takeover, displayed and retrieves it.

I go hysterical at him, demanding answers, reasons, of all the stupid ideas. “Why would go back for a useless piece of dead flesh and bone?”

“It was a symbol, and that symbol is gone…Besides I needed something from it.” He tugs a chain out from under his shirt, the mangled burnt remains of his wedding ring hangs from it just low enough to rest against his heart.

I don’t slow my tirade. _How dare he risk his life for either of those symbols, an arm, a ring, who the fuck cares!_

Apparently we both fucking care, because taking our argument private ends up resulting with a rushed couple impassioned minutes in the supply closet. At least that finishes off my hostility towards him, and eases just a bit of the tightness that stress paints across him as we reassure each other of how very alive we are. He doesn’t apologize and neither do I, but we’re too busy to focus on that.

After the initial strikes, at the start of day three, we called, begged, and bought as much help as we could get, though we are still spread too thin. Every favor, any idea, we called them in, put them into motion within hours. But it was coordinated, the main attack was on our Star City, the free-for-all of violence was hitting every population center on both coasts. As far as the citizens…well other than a relatively small number, those that wanted to help or steal or flat out couldn’t, they all fled.

Their flight to perceived safety clogging up every driving, sailing, and running exit after word that the airport and train station were destroyed. Everyone wanted to evacuate, escape, part of me says not to blame them, it’s natural, but we needed them, needed our own army, anyone, everyone, and they failed us. After everything we’d done for them over all these years, _they failed us_.

As our coworkers, friends, and families were decimated with every passing day, shock and anger turned to desperation, then to horror.

Thea was the first, there was an explosion…we spent all night and tore through half City Hall’s worth of debris in the hopes that she might have survived, might have…

Her body was under a steel beam, red marks where she had tried to get it off, tried to slip out. Those marks stole even the slight reassurance of speed, the damage to her hands showed it must have taken hours. She was probably still conscious when we started our hunt, though it wouldn’t have been long after that she-, she…

We moved her body back to the spare base.

The days that follow then eats away at our team… We move like zombies half the time, autopilot, barely eating, rarely falling into the exhausted sleep that at most lasts a handful of restless hours.

We relocate to a hidden set of rooms at my already looted company, before they ransack what levels of the bunker they can attack. Oliver was outed as the Green Arrow just before, literally seconds before he lost his arm, so we have to keep moving.

Hooking into a satellite so we can keep working the only thing that greets us is a clip going viral online even with all the other horrors happening. The shakey footage of John in full Spartan garb and Lyla equipped with as many weapons and as much body armor as we and ARGUS could fit on her, fighting off two gangs of heavily armed people, trying to give the hospital those precious minutes to evacuate those last few that were too dangerous to move before all hope seemed lost. We would find out later this was probably a capture from two hours in that battle, and their exhaustion was obvious. All it took was one large caliber round from whatever the hell that weapon was to punch straight through them both. They were gone before their bodies hit the ground.

We both watched in shock, falling to grief for minutes we didn’t have to waste. The remaining members of the team was scattered, and the communication lines had long ago failed or were jammed. Oliver dons black, taking a page from his days in the League and using the shadows and violence.

Weeks pass, things die down, but only because there are so few left to fight.

As Oliver beat his anger out on a band that tried to loot the sublevels of the bunker I scavenged more armor and tech, finishing cobbling together my work with a thin, sprayed on, film of intumescent coating the company had been working on, because fuck you fire. A quick blast dry and I’m suiting up for the remainder of what might be coming. I even have on the mask I swore to myself never to wear.

Oliver storms back in, the tech that makes up his arm fritzing and damaged. “Let me look at- Don’t hit it- Oliver stop hitting it! That won’t help it work and will make it harder to repair!” He doesn’t stop, just keeps moving to the spot where the second prototype is encased. The bloody, still twitching, prosthetic limb is disconnected and dropped to the floor on his way. “These aren’t exactly easy to replace-“ I growl over the faint whir and click of the new one, still gleaming without the 3d printed synthetic skin covering it, activating. I’m just starting to pull off the leather gloves I had worked on for my creation to replace them with latex ones when he turns, takes one look and roars, _ROARS_ , “NO!” at me.

I flinch at the loudness of it, even as my mouth drops open. I can count the number of times he’s raised his voice at me on his remaining fingers, most to warn me of the kids, but in anger? Even if it’s grief fueled? I can’t remember more than once in all these years, and it was nothing like that sound.

“YOU ARE NOT-” He cuts himself short to pick me up and carry me, fighting and protesting every step, to the emergency escape that leads to the helicopter. “You think for one second that I’m going to let you put yourself in-“

I twist enough that he has to put me down before I activate the emergency release on his arm, “ _Let me?_ I love you, but you do not get to make that decision for me. It’s my city, my home too! Quite frankly I could use the Kevlar, especially after what happened to…” My heart clenches. _Everyone._ “You’re not the only one soaked in their blood, not the only one who needs to help.”

“Go. Get the kids, Raisa, and your mom. Take them somewhere safe.”

“Safe? Please tell me where you think that is. Those kids will be grieving the loss of their aunt, John Jr the loss of his parents, they will need both of us.” I touch the ring hidden under his shirt. “We need to finish the evacuations and-“

“I’m not leaving.”

“You did your best, we all did, we held this city together through blood, sweat, tears, and immeasurable sacrifice. Your leadership didn’t matter, my company didn’t matter, our daily and nightly fights to keep it afloat didn’t matter. Grant Wilson might as well have brought a nuke-“

“GO!” He bellows it out. So full of fear and rage, so unlike him that I have to fight not to show the terror that sound hammers through me.

“If you stay I stay.”

“You would _orphan_ our children?”

“ _Don’t you_ _dare_! Our children are not _your_ only ones, if anyone should leave to be with them it’s you!”

“Felicity _you_ will be leaving this city if I have to drug you, strap you in, and ship you out on autopilot in that damn helicopter.”

“Oliver!” He doesn’t say another word, just hoists me over his good shoulder and takes the steps two at a time. “Don’t do this! We are a team! Oliver stop!” I can feel the tears falling and can’t stop them any easier than I can stop him. “You promised me- You swore at our wedding! Don’t do this! I will never forgive you for this!”

He flings open the door and shoves me in the seat. Voice low, tight, full of everything that I’m feeling too. “Then don’t forgive me, but you are going.” I fight to get free, trying to crawl over him, turning the helicopter off just as fast as he turns it on. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

“You’re already hurting me!”I hit at the arm until I get it just right and the hunk of metal and plastic drops to the ground, somehow he can still keep me in here with just the one arm.

“I’d rather have you hate me if you’ll be living to hate me.” He pulls out the small device and I shake my head, gasping his name in disbelief. But it doesn’t change anything, he presses it to my lower back and my legs go numb.

That was designed for if anyone hacked into the circuitry and used my own body against me, again, five minutes to take control before it rebooted itself, if the idea that he’d use it to force me to go had ever occurred to me …I do hate him, right now I hate him more than I can say. My eyes aching from the crying I can’t seem to stop. “I hate that I trusted you to keep your vows. I hate that you always think you’re right. And right now I do hate you Oliver!” He starts pressing things at the controls as I struggle to sit up. “Come with me and we’ll figure this out, together. Stay here and we are through. You send me away now and I will _never_ come back to you!” He doesn’t say a word, just presses the autopilot activation and starts to close the door. A yank, forces them over my knuckle and I hold my rings up between my fingers. “Then put these on your chain because I don’t want them.” I drop them, their clang drowned out by the blades spinning into a takeoff speed. As I am carried away I see him pick up the rings, then the false arm, staring at me, face an emotionless mask.

}]}———}>

The tracker in his ring was destroyed, when reports of his death make the news in the next few days I can’t use it, but the ones in mine are still functional. I debate what to tell our children. William is grown enough to tell the truth and he and I agree on the ‘ _damned stupid unforgivableness-ness-ness of the suicidal shit_ ’ Oliver pulled in a low late night when the emptying bottle makes me forget to censor myself. I know he’s an adult now, but I’ll always see him as that scared grieving child who just needed to be held between us even though my belly was swollen with his first sibling. He calls me Felicity to my face, but refers to me as ‘Mom’ or ‘my mom’ when he isn’t thinking about what he says. Our other kids, they’re too young to understand that Daddy’s still alive but refuses to leave the city that is all but destroyed, refuses, because there has to be a way to reach out, to contact them…I know if he did there’s no way he would stay away and he must know the same.

I still love him. I still hate him. I’m declared a widow in the eyes of the state and I don’t correct them. Life goes on, the kids grow – taking after me with their brilliant brains, taking after him with their breathtaking risks, taking after both of us trying to make the world a better place.

}]}———}>

A decade and a half after the Uprising I get a call in the middle of the night, no words, just silence as I groggily ask who it is. When it doesn’t disconnect I whisper his name.

He sounds so similar, weary and older, yes, but it’s still him. “I- I lied…Convinced myself…I told them you left…”


End file.
